Thai oil and retail magnate eyes more Cambodian expansion
Thai oil and retail magnate eyes more Cambodian expansion
The Thailand headquartered and publicly listed company, PTT Oil and Retail Business (OR), has announced that it will increase investments in its Cambodia oil and retail businesses over the next four years from 2024 to 2028, due to ongoing success in the neighbouring market.
According to representatives of the OR firm, the Kingdom represents the company’s top foreign earner in recent periods.
According to the firm’s CEO Disathat Panyarachun, in a recent interview with Thai media, OR has confirmed that it will invest 8 billion baht, around $225 million, to expand its overseas business interests in the coming four years, with aims to boost the company’s competitiveness in the global market and build on previous successes.
In Cambodia, the firm’s subsidiary, PTT (Cambodia) Ltd., is a petroleum company that operates both oil and retail businesses.
PTT (Cambodia) Ltd. supplies distributes and markets petroleum and related products, as well as accompanying retail businesses including brands such as Café Amazon, 7-Eleven Mart, Jiffy Mart, and EV Station PluZ.
Disathat said the company is focusing on expanding PTT Stations and Café Amazon branches in Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and the Philippines under the new expansion plans.
Outside these investment destinations, the firm also noted upcoming investments in other regional markets including Myanmar and mainland China.
Notably, however, Disathat said that of all the firm’s overseas market ventures thus far, Cambodia is generating the highest revenue for the company, followed by the Philippines and Laos.
Due to the success found in the Cambodian market, the CEO called Cambodia OR’s ‘second home’ outside of Thailand.
Disathat also said that Cambodia has the unique potential to support its subsidiary entity Thai Oil.
Including Cambodian production, the company’s oil refinery capacity would be able to increase from 260,000 barrels to over 400,000 barrels a day over the next two years, he said.
“Cambodia does not have oil refineries so it has to import fuel,” Disathat stated, offering a significant opportunity for the firm to step in.
Meanwhile, the company also intends to focus on investment in fuel depots and jet fuel provision to meet the Kingdom’s growing demand for airborne transport, noted the CEO.
Currently, OR and Total Energies (Cambodia) are supplying jet oil to aircraft in the existing international airport in Phnom Penh.
However, in August of last year, OR confirmed that has invested $100 million to build a new oil depot in Cambodia specifically for aviation refuelling at the Techo International Airport (TIA), Phnom Penh’s new international airport which is currently under construction and nearing completion.
The 4F-class TIA airport, being built on a 2,600-hectare plot spanning the borders of both Kandal and Takeo provinces, is scheduled to be operational by the end of the first half of 2025.
The announcement of the new fuel depot in 2023 follows the OR company’s co-investment in an aviation refuelling service in Cambodia three years ago.
In 2021, OR, China National Aviation Fuel International Holdings and Total Energies Marketing (Cambodia) formed a joint venture company, the Phnom Penh Aviation Fuel Service Company, to operate the aviation refuelling business at Phnom Penh’s new TIA in the coalition.
With a third of the total investment contributed from each firm, the project is equally funded by three companies, expected to be completed in step with TIA’s official inauguration next year.
